


Heavenly Beings

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Fairytales and Fripperies [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>North, South, and Somewhere-in-Between - where does a girl with distant dreams belong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavenly Beings

There was a girl. Very nearly a princess, and certainly a witch.

A  _good_  witch, though. Only good witches got places in this world, and the witch-with-no-crown very much wanted to go  _somewhere._

In this world, there are three places to go: North, South, and Somewhere-in-Between. The witch-with-no-crown was from the North, and by somes strange miracle, or quirk of capricious fate, was noticed by a prince, who came from the South.

Or at least, he  _said_ he came from the South. 

The witch-with-no-crown believed him, because he was fair and lovely, just as the princes in the storybooks she had so cherished as a little girl all were. His skin was ivory, his hair spun gold, and his heart surely the same.

_Surely._ The girl was a witch, and witches had the gift of seeing true hearts, didn't they? Everyone said so, and so it must of course be true.

So everyone said, at least.

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere-in-Between, the ivory-skinned prince was... Not so princely at all. Oh, he ruled, true enough, but the shine of his hair seemed more gilt than gold, in the sickly red-dead light of Somewhere-in-Between. Everything seemed gilt here, washed over with light that came from something like a sun, but wrong - suns, as Sansa knew them, glowed yellow-white and sharp, harsh on endless snow and splintered bright through frosty boughs in a wood made holy by those who made it live. 

The witch-with-no-crown thought that was the trouble with Somewhere-in-Between. The North was cold and harsh and sometimes even cruel, it was so difficult, but it was  _alive._ The people there strove to  _live,_ to laugh and love and  _be,_ but here, there was no striving. Here, the people - if they could be called that - seemed trapped by a queer desire to  _remain._

The stagnation soured the very air of the place, tanging on her tongue like overripe fruit.

The hollow stink of the place rang sharp as a funeral bell in her aching heart, and the witch-with-no-crown thought the prince-with-no-soul would make a cruel king indeed, crueller even than the vast, bloated shadow that currently sat amidst the twisted razors of the throne.

* * *

 

 

There were visitors, sometimes.

The witch-with-no-crown knew that she was trapped Somewhere-in-Between, held there by magics she didn't understand, by some contract she did not remember signing, and had no choice but to use what magics she  _did_ know for the prince-with-no-soul the moment he became the king-with-no-soul. 

Her magics were tied to the waters, inherited from her mother the water-witch and her father the winter-warlock both, and clean water was prized above all else save notice in this place.

What water they had was as stagnant as their desires, brackish and dark and ugly, wounded in a way that made the witch-with-no-home sorrow in sympathy. She sang it back to wellness, made it run trickling and tinkling and bright as moonlight on hoarfrost for its own sake, and for the weight of the compulsion she felt on the back of her neck every time she tried to resist an order from the king-with-no-soul.

The visitors changed everything, though.

 

* * *

 

 

They came from the South, the  _true_  South, and brought with them the living-breathing-moving-growing taste of life and fresh air which the witch had missed so much. When they were there, oh, when the visitors were there, the things she could  _do_ with her magics! Perfect snowflakes feathered from her fingers, portraits in silver-shining frost spread across the bleak red marble and black granite. _  
_

When the visitors came, the witch-with-no-crown and the witch-with-no-home because just a girl again, a girl with long red hair and bright blue eyes who missed her family so much she was heartsick, and had run away with a boy who tricked her into believing that they shared love.

"My name is Sansa," she confided one day, feeling as though some chain had been shed, some manacle about her throat unlocked, and it was as though she were speaking for the very first time. "Sansa Stark."

There was shock, and horror, and something that reminded her of awe in the eyes of those around her, and there was also... Speculation.

 

* * *

 

 

When  _he_ came, Sansa wondered how it was that she ever found Joffrey beautiful.

He was _life_ , older than her but somehow  _new,_ a smile always hiding on his lovely, full mouth, his heart in his eyes and on his sleeve, and his hands long-fingered and elegant and gentle as the first slow unfurling of a springtime snowdrop. 

He shared stories of sunshine that pooled in the air like honey, limning everything in saffron and gold, drawing butterflies and dragonflies and buzzing, bumbling bees to flit and rumble between flowers of a thousand colours. With her eyes closed and her fingers linked with his, Sansa could almost see them, could almost  _smell_ them, and it was the lightest her heart had felt in so terribly long.

 

* * *

 

 

"We might arrange it," one of them whispered, "but we cannot  _do_ it. That is not how things work in the South."

Death was a natural part of life in the North. Sansa had never done it before, but she knew that she could do it now, if it would rid them all of Joffrey's pestilent presence. 

The dagger she spun from ice and hope would melt before anyone found it, and water so pure as that would leave no trace.

 

* * *

 

 

"My name is Willas,"  _he_ confided, "my last name Tyrell," _he_ added, "and I should like to share that with you,"  _he_ finished, looking like summer and tasting like a dream as she kissed him.

She would never be a princess, the witch-without-a-crown, but better that than to be a witch-without-a-home. She would never be that again, not so long as she had Willas.


End file.
